


A Merchant in Baghdad

by LSPrincess



Series: You're My Medicine [3]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, Coma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e18 Light the Wick, Guilt, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Overdose, POV Oswald Cobblepot, Rating May Change, Regret, Season/Series 03, Self-Doubt, Self-Hatred, Slow Build, Suicidal Thoughts, the army of freaks is a lot more loyal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-10 08:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20132194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LSPrincess/pseuds/LSPrincess
Summary: “When you wake up, Ed, I’ll be here. Waiting. And you’ll see that your plan failed — that we’re both still here, and I guess we’ll just have to start again, won’t we? And when that time comes, I’ll gladly take a do-over. Because I didn’t get to do it right the first time.”[On hiatus!]





	1. Pick it All Up and Start Again

After many a harrowing experience, Oswald Cobblepot could definitively be determined quite invincible. Such a conclusion was something that Oswald might have bragged about and used to his domineering advantage once — now, he merely regarded it with nothing more than a sort of reminiscent despondency, wishing it be gone if it could only mean a prompt return to the times when Oswald would not have worried about whether or not he could survive a bullet to the stomach. He would gladly do away with this new and incredible revelation if it meant he could go back to being the mayor with Edward Nygma as his diligent chief of staff. And he would let him live happily however he pleased, whether with Isabella or himself — and if it was the former, he would look on with polite admiration and well-concealed loathsome jealousy if it permitted Ed to live carelessly in that bubble of contented domesticity. It was a hideous lifestyle for someone with such promising potential as Ed, but keeping himself from sticking his nose where it didn’t belong was an easy choice to make if it, in turn, kept him from being shot — if it could keep him living as perfect of a life as he could alongside Ed, and oh, how Oswald _prayed_ it would. If he could turn back time, he’d do so in a heartbeat, leave this metaphorical invincibility to the next unfortunate sap that found himself being dumped in the river with lead in his stomach and staring up at his one and only love interest. A dramatic end to a dramatic story — if only it could be the end, after all.

But such naive dreams were better suited for a child, and Oswald knew better than anyone that immortality — however promising it may seem — was a fleeting fantasy one could not afford to entertain whilst pursuing their attempted murderer. It was a journey he was not looking forward to, regardless of how justified his revenge could be, and he detested himself for such a weakness. But no amount of self-directed abhorrence could banish that lead weight of hesitance — this, Oswald knew all too well. And because of such iron-willed trepidation (however smothered beneath self-hatred it may be), Oswald still paused in the alley outside of Jim Gordon’s house, frozen to his spot on the stairs even as the man himself emerged and locked the door behind him. It was a spell, it seemed — a curse, even, cast upon him the precise moment he’d looked into those dark brown eyes belonging to no one other than that mystical Edward Nygma and fallen desperately in love. Edward could have ripped Oswald’s leg off with his bare hands and beaten him with it and a part of Oswald would always forgive him for it, would always doubt how truly justified any form of revenge against the one you love could be, would always hold his heart captive and make him freeze until further prompted.

“Oswald,” Gordon breathed disbelievingly, a sound that was immensely satisfying to Oswald’s still water-logged ears.

“Hello, Jim,” he said, forcing a smile to his face and relieved to find no hesitation in his muscles at doing so. It seemed Gordon’s words had been enough to thaw his tentative heart — how bitterly ironic, Oswald thought, though not entirely sure as to why.

“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’re still alive,” the officer continued, voice still thick and strained with that tenacious incredulity.

“Yes,” Oswald said with a great sigh of relief. “I am quite hard to kill.”

In a distant spot behind Jim, Firefly ignited her flamethrower in a silent threat, the sight of the brief bursts of fire further thawing Oswald’s muscles and stretching his smile wider.

“I take it this isn’t a social call,” Gordon said, turning back to Oswald once determining that Firefly was not an immediate threat.

“I’m looking for Ed,” Oswald said hastily, more than thankful to skip over the idle chat. “We have some unfinished business. I went home and…he isn’t at the house. He isn’t at City Hall, my agents have reported,” he said, gesturing over Jim’s shoulder. “I’m not  _ quite ready _ to show my face on the street again — you understand, of course — so,  _ Jim, _ you’re my last resort. I pray you don’t disappoint me.”

“Nygma?” Jim said. “Well, no, I wouldn’t expect him to be at work. He’s in the hospital. Has been for a while.”

Oswald paused again, his legs and arms growing cold, his heart growing hesitant, his mind going blank.

“The hospital?” he asked in a broken whisper, a weak tone which tugged his self-loathing to the surface.

“Yeah,” Gordon continued slowly, hesitantly, perhaps wanting to test the waters but instead plunging in headfirst when Firefly lit her flamethrower again. “It’s been about a week. I haven’t gotten the chance to learn anything because they’ve been turning away everyone who’s gone in to see him. I was meaning to go in and see him myself later, see if he knew anything about your whereabouts, but I’ve been busy.” He squared his shoulders. “Looks like that won’t be necessary anymore, thank God.”

“Who’s been trying to get in to see him?” Oswald snapped, that poisonous hesitance stamped down by vile jealousy and heart-wrenching concern.

“Coworkers, I’d imagine.”

“You’d  _ imagine? _ You mean you haven’t  _ checked?” _

“Like I said, I’ve been busy,” Gordon said emotionlessly, glancing over his shoulder at Firefly. “As a matter of fact, I’m  _ still  _ busy. I gave you what you asked for, Oswald, do you think I could get back to work?”

_ “Work,”  _ Oswald growled, pulling Jim closer by a fistful of his shirt, “is all you’ve  _ ever _ cared about. We’re old friends, Jim — is it too much to ask that, in my absence, you keep track of my  _ better _ friends? Another  _ old friend _ of yours, even?”

“You mean the ‘old friend’ that killed three of my coworkers and framed me for murder?” Jim snapped back, voice lower and more chilling than Oswald’s own. “Sorry,” he said with a toothy smile, gripping Oswald’s wrist and prying his hand from his shirt, “if it didn’t cross my mind to maintain a connection with him. He became your handful to deal with the minute you made him your chief of staff. I’m not getting roped into these petty aggressions between you two, so go check on him yourself.”

Oswald jerked his hand back, holding it against his chest as if he’d been burnt, staring daggers at Gordon. “I assure you,  _ Jim,” _ he said, pounding his walking stick against the ground, “there is  _ nothing _ petty about it. Go. Run off and deal with whatever vaguely illegal grave you’ve dug yourself now. But,” Oswald continued, catching Jim by his tie when he’d moved to shove past him, “I do expect you to check up on him at some point. Preferably before he’s discharged. If not for amicable reasons, then do it to feed it to the press. I’m sure they’re  _ dying _ to know what’s happened.”

“Really? You wouldn’t want that kind of credit?”

“All I want, Jim,” Oswald said coldly, tugging Gordon closer a step, “is to ensure the safety and well-being of my dear friend. The rest of it’s in your hands.”

“Gee,” Gordon said with another smile, once again breaking free of Oswald’s grasp and backing up toward the stairs, “you have my gratitude,  _ Mr. _ Cobblepot.”

If those words glued Oswald to the spot as Gordon disappeared, he certainly didn’t let it show.

“The hospital,” he ordered over his shoulder, Firefly stepping closer to acknowledge that she’d heard him. “I’m going alone. If he’s been in there as long as Jim says he has, then I’m willing to bet he can’t put up a fight. If I call you, however,” Oswald said, turning completely to face his associate, “I expect you to be there promptly.”

“You got it, Mr. Penguin,” she said with a smile, the melted flesh of her face stretched tautly. “Put a cap between his eyes.”

“I intend to,” Oswald said with a smile, turning toward the stairs and pulling out his phone to call Ivy. His limp was worse due to the cold he felt coursing through his veins, that numb white noise of vacillation buzzing in his ear like a fly.

He didn’t intend to shoot Ed. In truth, he didn’t know quite  _ what _ he intended, but if anyone were to get a bullet in the brain, a part of him said that it would be him. And a larger part of him was  _ itching _ to do the honors. He hadn’t felt right since he’d woken up in Ivy’s dilapidated greenhouse, hadn’t felt like he’d belonged. He was supposed to be dead, that much was obvious, and a part of him that sympathized with Ed’s aggression felt that he should remedy that mistake, that he should fix it for Ed to not put him through the trouble again.

Since waking up those few days ago, he’d been all too aware of the scar on his stomach, still pink and tender, still sore to an extent. He hadn’t had an appetite, hadn’t dressed with such grace and ease as he used to. Whenever he buttoned a shirt or vest or jacket, he was so mindful of that one painful place on his stomach, the pressure that he still felt within, as if the bullet was still inside, burrowing deeper with every passing thought of Ed that didn’t entail the many ways he could tear him apart. Those thoughts occurred far more than Oswald preferred, thoughts of his smile, his breathtaking eyes, his hands, his voice — sometimes it would speak, sometimes it would just hum some tune Oswald was unfamiliar with, some melody he felt he should know. Only in moments when he was blinded by his rage could he picture putting a bullet in Ed’s stomach (then two, then three), slicing his throat, stabbing him in the heart and tearing him apart bit by bit. And when he was presented with these pictures, he never felt within him the satisfaction and longing he did when thinking of Ed’s gentle caress, every small detail of his face, the way he could look Oswald in his eyes and say with such patent sincerity, “I would do anything for you.”

It was reasons such as this that had Oswald freezing, not speaking, even as Ivy answered his call.

The ride to the hospital was quick and silent, though with no one in the car beside himself and the chauffeur, Oswald wasn’t expecting any chit-chat. He ordered the driver to find a spot and stay there until further notice, leaving Oswald staring up at the bland facade of Gotham General and shivering against the cold that crept through his veins. It was that same sensation of hitting those frigid, ruthless waters, feeling them fill a hole in your body that shouldn’t be there, feeling them shroud you in filth and disease. Oswald knew that sensation all too well, and even after emerging from that seemingly inescapable Hell to which he’d been condemned, he still felt it every waking moment. That creeping gelidity, that embraced hopelessness, that desperate gasping and praying that it was all some nightmare from which he’d wake to find himself cold and alone in the mansion. Every living moment he spent dying, drowning from the moment that gunshot burst his eardrums.

A gunshot that he heard in every dream. A face that he saw in every passing thought. Words that he heard in every opening mouth.

_ “I don’t love you.” _

These were what propelled him forward through the doors and to the receptionist’s desk.

Gotham General was always as Oswald vaguely remembered it: drab, depressing, and so blatantly a white-walls, white-ceiling hospital that it left you wanting to patch up your wounds in the dank and musty basement of an abandoned house. Thankfully, Oswald had never had to suffer being treated here, for in the previous events that he had found himself injured, he’d wound up in a river, in a trailer in the woods, in a stranger’s house, in an abandoned estate overrun by plants, and, most despicably, in the Arkham Asylum infirmary. All very unconventional situations, but still preferable (excluding the infirmary — damned be those demented screams) over this establishment.

Oswald had found himself wondering once or twice if it was a policy within the Gotham General walls to keep everything as painfully average and visually inoffensive as possible, for it seemed that even the  _ staff _ and their livery were as mind-numbingly insipid as their accommodations. The receptionist at the desk that he was quickly approaching was no exception to this judgement.

“Hello,” Oswald greeted tersely, tapping his walking stick against the floor to attract the woman’s attention. “I’m here to see one Edward Nygma — former chief of staff of this city. I was told he was admitted close to a week ago. I can assure you, he’s  _ not _ expecting me,” he said with a dry laugh.

The receptionist — a stout woman in her forties, Oswald was willing to estimate — gave him a cursory once-over, then turned back to the newspaper that Oswald was sure she was not even reading. “Edward Nygma is not accepting visitors at this time, please come back later and we’ll see about letting you in,” she recited robotically, idly turning the page of the paper. It appeared a well-rehearsed reply, and perhaps once in recent events, it was delivered with a modicum of sincerity, a quality cruelly discarded with repetition.

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough,” Oswald began, veins afire with impatient venom. “My name is Oswald Cobblepot, former  _ mayor _ of this city, and in one of these bland and disgustingly sterile rooms, you’ve locked up my chief of staff and dear friend  _ Edward Nygma.”  _ He leaned forward over the counter in a vaguely conspiratorial manner, eyes alight with overt hostility. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I don’t know why he’s here. So, I’m going to see him, whether you  _ let _ me in, or not.”

“Did you say ‘Cobblepot’?” the woman asked, perking up, seemingly unfazed by the unspoken threat to Oswald’s words. “You know, that is the  _ only _ name the doctor said to accept,” she mumbled, typing something on the computer and bringing up records. With a heavy sigh, she pointed down the hall. “He’s in room 125. I’ll see about having a nurse sent your way to give you his diagnosis.”

“Thank you kindly for your cooperation,” Oswald said with a smile, far less taken aback by the abrupt turn of events than he felt he should be. There must have been something in the “Get Shot by Your Best Friend and Only Love Interest” starter pack that left one inherently prepared for any and all conventionally unexpected situations, Oswald theorized with an inward scoff. Compared to the other mental and emotional alterations he’d experienced since his happy Death Day, this revelation was nothing to dwell upon, and Oswald had been trying to make it a habit not to dawdle, anyhow.

The one advantage this spotless institution had over others, Oswald supposed, was that there was a thankful shortage of crazed screams as one strolled the halls. Of course, an occasional groan or sob would pop up here or there, but nothing that Oswald was strictly speaking unaccustomed to — not as if he was one  _ unaccustomed _ to the wails of the damned.

Room 125 was frankly painless to reach, though locked and protected by one nondescript security guard that Oswald had never seen before during his mayorship. The sight was disheartening, to say the least, but not an insurmountable obstacle. And still, there was a window, which Oswald calmly took to instead of immediately resorting to unnecessary bloodshed.

Thanks to the closed blinds, there was not much to behold, but Oswald could still make out a bedridden form through the quarter-inch slats of gracious visibility. It was impossible to say what state Edward was in — or if the patient within even  _ was _ Edward — but the confirmation of some presence was comforting nonetheless. It was an assurance that this tedious digression had not been for nothing.

“Mayor Cobblepot?” a soft voice came, and Oswald cursed inwardly for allowing himself to be snuck up upon.

_ “Former _ Mayor Cobblepot, my dear,” he corrected a little breathlessly, straightening his suit self-consciously. “I’m assuming you’ve come with news? What happened?” He rapped his knuckles against the window with a chuckle. “Did he trip over that gigantic ego of his and hit his head?”

For what it was worth, the nurse seemed to be conscious enough of Oswald’s reputation to know to give him a brief smile and laugh, in spite of her blatant solemnity. She moved on from this swiftly, however, preventing Oswald from pointing out such an error by tapping on her clipboard. “Says here it was an overdose.”

At that, Oswald’s heart froze. The sluggish cold that pervaded his extremities should have been alarming, Oswald supposed, but his icy mind was preoccupied with something else.

“An overdose?” he echoed softly, distantly disgusted by the weakness of his tone. “An overdose on  _ what?” _

“Uh, the—the test results show that he had a  _ shocking _ amount of…various drugs in his bloodstream,” the nurse continued hastily, deliberately avoiding eye contact as best she could, Oswald noted. “Opioids, cocaine, methamphetamine, and other obscure psychotropics — the results for one in specific came back strongest, so I think it’s safe to say that that’s what he—”

“That’s impossible,” Oswald interrupted, turning toward the window. The sight was still obscured by those mundane plastic blinds, but in light of recent discoveries, Oswald found he was almost thankful for the lack of view. “Ed…Ed would never do that. Why would he do that?”

“We were sort of hoping that  _ you _ might be able to shine some light on that situation.”

_ “Me?”  _ Oswald began slowly, dangerously, a word spat with such potential and inevitable outrage that the nurse had the common sense to retreat a step. “I haven’t been here for  _ weeks! _ Who was checking up on him all that time? There had to have been  _ someone _ keeping tabs on him — is there anything in the papers, the news, anything at all?”

“No, Mayor— _ Mr.  _ Cobblepot,” the nurse stammered. “From the reports I’ve seen, Mr. Nygma hardly made a public appearance after you went missing. Grieving, everyone said. You were presumed dead.”

_ Presumed _ dead, Oswald thought, pressing his palm against the glass of the window. If anyone had truly  _ presumed _ him dead, this hellish city would be in far worse disarray than it already was. Perhaps, he reflected with an additional pang of dread, the city was in shambles and he was just too blind to see it. This city had hardly felt like home since his return, and though Oswald had previously chalked it up to residual shock, he couldn’t help but wonder if the city  _ had _ changed after all. He was only gone for a few weeks, but he was certainly not one unfamiliar with how productive Edward Nygma and Barbara Kean could be by themselves, not to mention what they could achieve in solidarity. Perhaps if people had done more than simply  _ presume _ him dead, he wouldn’t have to be dealing with this inconceivable mess.

“How long has been taking the drugs?” Oswald asked with a sigh, fishing his mind out of the lethal pond of dark digressions into which it had sunk. “Am I wrong to assume that you have an estimate?”

The nurse shook her head and turned back to the papers on her clipboard, her wide and fearful eyes skimming over it frantically. “Uh, f-from the results of the blood test, I’d say steadily for a few months.”

“No,” Oswald said simply.

“No?”

“No — a shorter time frame.”

“Mr. Cobblepot, that isn’t—” the nurse began, but Oswald stopped her with a pound against the window.

“He hasn’t been doing them for months — I would have  _ known!  _ Estimate in a shorter time frame!”

“Okay! Um…S-Steadily for a few months or…lethal amounts in recent weeks. But, Mr. Cobblepot, that isn’t a  _ rational _ assumption. If it’s true, then he should be very, very dead.”

The news had been as Oswald had expected it — expected, perhaps, but not accepted. Two nearly homophonic words which held such different weight in the present situation.

Oswald turned to the window again, his chest constricted by the ice in his heart. “Who’s to say he isn’t?” he said vaguely, and only once the words were out, did Oswald understand what painful truth might lie behind such statements. It was untelling whether Ed was truly alive at all — or, at the very least, living as he once was. The man that Oswald Cobblepot remembered was a passionate, charismatic man, diligent in his duties and…willing to do anything for his boss and friend. The man that had shot him on the pier that day was a man that had been erased from the manuscripts of time — for now, at least. If that man was all that was left of the great Edward Nygma, then Oswald had no choice but to write him back in. And if there was something worse left in those opposing personalities’ wake, well…Oswald was content to burn the manuscript altogether.

“Can I see him?” he asked weakly, scratching his nails ever so faintly against the glass.

“Of course!” the woman gasped, enthusiastic in her surprise but still soft and sympathetic. It reminded Oswald a little too painfully of his mother. “He’s been comatose since they brought him in, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up for some sort of response, but you can always talk to him,” she continued, approaching the guard and accepting the keys that he preemptively held out for her. “Studies have shown that people in comas actually remain aware of their surroundings. I’m sure it would be nice to hear a familiar voice.”

“Nice,” Oswald repeated with a strained breath, trapping it in his already aching chest as the woman pushed the door open ajar. “Of course. Thank you, Nurse. I shan’t keep him up past his bedtime.”

“Of course, May— _ Mr. _ Cobblepot,” the lady said with a startlingly understanding smile. “You can visit him as frequently as you like. Good luck.”

_ “Luck,” _ Oswald snorted under his breath, striding into the room with as much grace as his wounded and trembling legs would allow him.  _ Luck _ should not be a word permitted in a hospital, Oswald felt.  _ Luck _ was something children clung to when operating claw machines.  _ Luck  _ was…

Luck was absolutely what Oswald needed. Luck and faith and several shots of whiskey, he conceded when his eyes fell upon that body in the bed for the first time. In truth, it had taken him an embarrassing amount of time to fully grasp what it was he was looking at — typically, mummies were not kept in patient beds — but once his mind had moved past the prominent external features, his eyes had settled upon the center of that ghastly complexion, and with a horrible, breathless sob that he might have fought if he had any strength within his bones, he recognized the face of his beloved chief of staff. His friend. His  _ love  _ — all housed within one man, held inside a body that hardly seemed fit to hold breath anymore.

With every shaking step he took toward the seat adjacent to the bed, he comprehended the sight just a little more. The dark circles around his bulging eyes, the tired skin faintly webbed with sickly blue blood vessels. The definition of his cheekbones and jaw, and subsequently, the way his gaunt cheeks fell in around them. The utterly pallid skin that seemed both stark white and greenish-blue — the effect, Oswald assumed, of the visible crosshatching of the veins that lay beneath. Lips that were so chapped they were bleeding, but seemingly the only part of his face that had managed to maintain a slightly pinkish hue. It was a sight that Oswald could never have imagined he’d see, and one he felt was far more suited for a horror movie than the real, tangible world. But ideas were spurned by experiences, Oswald mused, and the sad truth was that such cinematic depictions of living death were inspired by those like the man that lay before him. A man that Oswald had loved. A man that he seemed to love now more than ever.

He only looked away to draw the chair he was hovering over closer to the bedside, returning his intense gaze to that dying face as he eased himself into the seat.

“You really did it, didn’t you?” he said, so silently he was almost unsure if he’d heard himself. “You really did overdose. You really did put yourself here.”

Unsurprisingly, there was no reply.

Oswald forced himself to look away, if for nothing else than to stop himself from crying. He smoothed his hand down the papery bedsheets, finding the concealed form of Edward’s sickeningly bony hand and clasping it in his own.

“That…ridiculous but well-meaning nurse will have me believe that you can still hear me,” Oswald said with a wheezing laugh, his face quickly falling as he fought back the tears such physical exertion egged on. “I don’t know if it’s true — and if you could speak, I’m sure you’d be telling me the many reasons that it’s  _ not  _ — but if there’s half a chance in Hell that you  _ can _ hear me, Ed, you’d best be listening.” He sniffed deeply and pulled his gaze back up to meet that ghostly face again. Somehow, it felt worse to see when he’d been expecting it. “I didn’t cheat Death like he was an old adversary just for you to kill yourself. I didn’t get dragged from that filthy, freezing water and spend weeks fighting for my life just for you to throw yours away. I didn’t stay alive just to come back to for you to die by your own hand. So you’d better wake up, Ed. With you gone, there’s no point for me to stay, and I really don’t think I’m quite ready to die again.” 

A deep, chivalrous part of Oswald protested that it was rude to lie to the unaware, but he stamped it down and squeezed Ed’s hand in hopes of a boost of confidence. The truth that that pesky part of him so wanted him to tell was how ready he’d been to die since the moment he’d woken up. And now, sitting in this room by this man that had worked so painfully to end his own life, that inherent preparation was far stronger than it had ever been.

“When you wake up, Ed, I’ll be here. Waiting. And you’ll see that your plan  _ failed  _ — that we’re both still here, and I guess we’ll just have to start again, won’t we? And when that time comes, I’ll gladly take a do-over. Because I didn’t get to do it right the first time.”

Again, there was no response. Objectively, Oswald could see the comfort one might feel when talking to someone who was none the wiser of your presence. It left you with a sort of freedom, free range to do or say whatever you pleased, but Oswald felt that if he were to follow through with such careless possibilities, it would be disgraceful in a way. Why say things to Ed while he was unconscious that Oswald wouldn’t say to him while he was awake? Perhaps because it was easier, Oswald presumed, but if anyone else had been looking upon that face as he was, they too would understand just how difficult such a feat truly was.

“Wake up, Ed,” he said with a broken sob that heralded the tears that were to come before Oswald had even felt them on his face. “If for no other reason, then do it to see me die again. Do it to take me to that pier again and send me back to Hell. Do it to get revenge again.” He squeezed the hand in his grasp tighter, ducking his head and letting the tears fall onto his pants. “Hell, Ed, do it to ask me a riddle,” he sobbed, the words hardly intelligible. “Do it to brag about how much smarter you are than me. Do it for me, Ed. Do it so I can see you again.”

He reared his head up again to look at that pitiful face, this body that served as a torment beyond his darkest imaginings. Even if Ed did wake up, it was possible Oswald wouldn’t be greeted by the same man he’d known. It was possible, Oswald feared, that he wouldn’t be greeted by a man at all. For drugs, though injected to mingle freely with one’s life source, flushed every ounce of living identity one had left in their run-down, beaten up excuse for a body. Oswald had never seen the effects firsthand (hitherto this damnable moment), but he’d heard many a tale from the victims of his insatiable eavesdropping in his Fish Mooney days. Back then, listening to customers’ and coworkers’ tales of woe entailing friends or relatives they’d lost to those alleyway “medications”, he hadn’t felt a scrap of sympathy or empathetic grief. Now, weeping over the might-as-well-be-corpse of the only (arguably) living person that he loved, he knew that rumored pain all too well. It was a pain that quite possibly topped that of a bullet ripping through one’s insides. It was a pain that Oswald Cobblepot would hastily give up if it meant he could rectify his damnable feat of immortality.


	2. You've Got a Second Chance, You Could Go Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This was all [Oswald's] fault — there was no other explanation. For what else could have driven such a brilliant and egotistical man down a path of low-class self-destruction? He had done this to the man that he loved. He’d broken him, cracked his psyche, and he was seeing it all, physical evidence of Ed’s suffering mental state._
> 
> _This room was a time capsule, a canvas on which Ed had painted stories of his sorrow and plight — and Oswald was standing in it. Standing in the middle of this room, this capsule, this canvas, standing amidst the repercussions of Ed’s delusions._

There were very few things to surprise someone when their only present company was an unconscious junkie. The same applied to Oswald, whose decision to stay by Ed’s side for a few hours to make sure he didn’t die an unfitting death lying comatose in a hospital bed had turned into the decision to stay for as long as he physically could for the very same reason.

He’d dozed off a few times, but had always jerked himself awake never more than half an hour later. Following these periodic awakenings, he’d mutter his apologies to an unresponsive audience and excuse himself to the restroom and water fountain, then return promptly after to sit by Ed’s side and tell him pointless stories: narrations of murders he’d committed, recountals of their time spent together, tales of his childhood, or occasionally, stories Oswald had made up altogether. It never truly mattered, for there was never a response, and after the first two hours, Oswald had grown used to this. He no longer cared how long it had been since then, having worked himself into a mindless cycle — one that was coaxing him to slip into another routine nap, his mind and body already groggy from the drastically altered sleep schedule.

In this time, Oswald made an effort to sleep lightly. He wanted to be awake if Ed stirred even a little bit, so he tuned his ears into every tiny disturbance: the breeze outside, the distant clicking of heels or the rolling of squeaky wheelchairs, adjacent rooms’ doors opening and closing, the occasional sobbing or, rarely, laughter from patients and their visitors. He was fully focused on them all, that near cacophonous myriad painting murky pictures in his half-lucid mind, each image telling a different story, each one as vague as the last. Every time he woke, he hardly remembered them, and couldn’t help but to feel some vague imitation of loss — perhaps these dreams held some secret for him, some truth to his own subconscious he had not yet unlocked.

There was an almost promising philosophy to it all (something Oswald was sure Ed would have laughed at had he expressed it aloud to his conscious ears), but ever yet a philosophy that Oswald could not meditate upon for very long, for not even ten minutes into his drowsy spell, someone kicked in the door and nearly deafened Oswald’s overly-attentive ears with their shrill scream.

“What the _ hell?” _ Oswald cried, clamping his hands over his head and glaring at the intruder — a person who, after a cursory glance at their red hair and childish expression, was easily recognized and greeted with a deep groan from Oswald.

“Pengy!” Ivy exclaimed, placing a hand over her heart like a worried mother and fanning her face as if to prevent the flow of tears.

Oswald rolled his head out of his hands and frowned, slouching back in the hospital chair that had grown incredibly uncomfortable these past hours and fixing Ivy with a hideous stare. “Do not—”

“Where have you been?” the ginger cried, hardly taking note of Oswald’s warning and charging right up to his face, kneeling down and looking him over for injuries. “We’ve all been waiting! You scared me half to death, you idiot!”

Oswald, though secretly flattered by the careful attention he was receiving, caught Ivy’s hands to halt them in their frantic and slightly invasive pat-down. “I’ve been here, Ivy. And I believe I distinctly remember telling you to not seek me out.”

“Well, _ I _ distinctly remember _ you _ telling _ me _ that you’d be home by five! It’s almost 8:30 you forgetful jerk!”

“8:30?” Oswald echoed incredulously, craning his neck to stare out the window behind him. In passing, he supposed it never really was that easy to know the time of day solely from the ambiance when in Gotham, for the city lights shown as brightly as the sun itself. Upon closer inspection, however, Oswald could see that the world above the seemingly unscalable skyscrapers was as black as the filthy world below them — truly the only tell-tale sign of night. “Have I really been here that long?”

“Yes! You have! And we’ve all been freaking out for _three!_ _hours!”_ Ivy cried, punctuating her emotional outburst with unenthusiastic slaps to Oswald’s chest.

“For some unknowable reason, my instincts tell me that _ you _ were the only one freaking out,” Oswald said with a knowing and condescending smile, eyeing Ivy pointedly.

“Nuh-uh!” she objected with a shrill squeak. “Bridgit was pretty worried, too. Said it shouldn’t take _ this long _ to shoot someone between the eyes.”

A truer fact than most, Oswald thought with a heavy sigh, casting his gaze to the left and letting it settle on Edward’s painfully vacant expression. With no stress lines creasing his face, the space between his eyes was a far easier target than usual — simply pulling out his gun and firing a bullet into him would be all too simple and perhaps _ merciful, _depending on one’s perspective.

Oswald knew for a fact that if Edward had considered the possibility of irreparable brain damage as a consequence to this ill-fated and still mostly obscure addiction, he would have gone to the effort of making sure his suicide attempt was one with more _ definitive _ results.

“So, is that him?” Ivy piped up, far too chipper for someone staring a close equivalent of Death in the face. “The guy that shot you? Your old friend?”

Oswald opened his mouth to reply but soon found there were no preconceived words to say and simply closed it again with a mostly inaudible huff.

Typically, people these days recognized Ed as either Oswald’s “old friend” (for the unassuming citizens) or “the guy that shot you” (for the unfortunately enlightened) — never both. Leave it to the twelve-year-old in a woman’s body to stray from convention.

“Sooo, what? Are you gonna like…wait until he’s awake to kill him? Talk to him a bit? Rattle on about your sorrow and pain and then pull a melodramatic ‘Now _ you’ll _ feel _ my _ pain!’ and shoot him before he—”

“No!” Oswald groaned, waving his hands animatedly to interrupt Ivy’s crude pantomime with a finger-gun. “No, I don’t think I will, Ivy. Nothing like that. I wouldn’t be giving him a chance to fight back. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“But…But you still stayed?” Ivy asked, gentle voice thick with genuine confusion. If Oswald had been unaware of her age predicament, he might have stabbed her for feigning such ignorance and naivety. Instead, he offered her a tight-lipped smile and pushed himself to his stiff feet, covering the meagre space that had been separating he and Edward with a few unhurried limps to hover over him like a protective bird.

“Like you said: he’s my old friend. And a part of me not caught in the crossfire of his lethally misplaced aggression will always regard him as such.”

“Oh,” Ivy mumbled contemplatively, and Oswald realized too late that he’d spoken too quickly, too complexly for his young companion to follow. He might have taken the time to clarify his meaning if there had been any part of him at all that truly wanted Ivy to understand. “Well, do you…want me to stay with you?” Ivy continued, moving forward a step and placing her palms down either side of Ed’s feet.

“No, Ivy,” Oswald said softly with a faint smile, “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“I can bring him some plants!” the girl exclaimed, bouncing up onto the balls of her feet, positively beaming at the prospect of being able to assist in any way. “I have _ loads _ that can help — my friend’s in a coma, too, and I put them all around her room—”

How someone could sound so jubilant while discussing a comatose friend was a matter far beyond Oswald, and one he had neither the patience nor mental ability in his current state of exhaustion to think about. “No…thank you, Ivy, but I don’t think he’ll want…_ plants _ suffocating him when he wakes up.”

_ If he wakes up, _a nagging voice in Oswald’s pounding head corrected him. In the earlier hours of the day when the sun still shone with some promise of positivity, Oswald might have been half tempted to fight that voice back, but after five hours of staring at that cold, motionless husk of a man he cherished more than anything, he only accepted the antagonism with a resigned sigh and twitch of his eyebrows.

“What_ happened _ to him?” Ivy asked, moving around to the other side of the bed and bending over to inspect his face with a scrunched up nose. “He looks like really bad beef jerky.”

Though completely oblivious to the meaning of that assessment (and not entirely _ wanting _ clarification), Oswald cringed. “A drug overdose, apparently,” he rattled off robotically, having recited the words over and over in his head in disbelief upon the initial revelation. The familiarity of the statement had remained, however, and Oswald found that saying it aloud was not unlike giving one’s name.

“Oh,” Ivy said again, though this time softer and with a more grievous tone. It was obvious that she knew what such a diagnosis meant, that she’d seen it before and knew the worst that it could be. It was a very weighted tone, and one that Oswald instantaneously loathed with a fiery passion.

“At least come back to the house, Pengy,” she said, voice lowered with lingering sympathy. “It’s too big for me to know my way around yet, and besides…_ you _ need a shower.”

Oswald frowned and ran his fingers through his hair self-consciously, grimacing at the tacky product that greased his fingers. Very rarely did he find himself in such states of disarray, looking more like that subservient, scheming umbrella boy _ rat _ that he used to be than the dignified, refined former mayor that he was now.

For some peculiar reason, the thought of not looking his incomparable best while caring for Ed in this state felt like a punch to his overly sensitive gut.

“A shower,” he repeated pensively, heaving in a deep breath and releasing a contented hum. “I’d be amenable to that.”

The time it took to get to the Van Dahl mansion was significantly longer than the time it took to get from Jim Gordon’s shabby apartment to Gotham General, however both car rides felt eerily similar in brevity and silence.

For the first time in their fledgling acquaintanceship, Ivy had remained quiet for longer than five minutes. _ Much _ longer, in fact, Oswald noted with a flicker of worry. However, it was a topic to address another time when he wasn’t busy staring out the window watching the grime and scum of Gotham recede into the horizon and meditating on Ed’s medical situation.

There were things Oswald could do, he presumed, with the money he possessed. Hire more capable doctors, employ experimental remedies, take Ed out of the city — out of the _ country _ — if it was better for him to heal elsewhere. There were very few limitations to the extents to which Oswald would go to ensure the safety and well-being of Edward Nygma. Perhaps if he’d made strides towards these extents sooner, the poor man wouldn’t be where he was right now.

Oswald wasn’t expecting a big greeting once he’d walked through the door, and though he most certainly didn’t receive one, it was mildly shocking to find Bridgit waiting up for him in the living room by the hearth (admiring the flames, no doubt).

“You didn’t kill him, did you?” she asked bitterly, those fiery eyes burning holes into Oswald’s icy ones.

It was as rhetorical of a question as rhetorical could be, words interwoven and laced with an unspoken but underlying answer to themselves. Though verbal confirmation was unnecessary, Oswald still squared his shoulders and set his jaw defensively, preparing himself to reply. “No.”

The scowl that passed Bridgit’s face was hideous in its intensity and unnerving in the way that it affected her scarred and melted skin. “You should have let me come with you. I would have roasted him the second I laid eyes on him.”

“Which is precisely why I _ didn’t _ let you come.”

“Why?” Bridgit snapped, throwing her arms in the air like a melodramatic teenager. “It could have been over!”

“There is _ far _ more to this than simply killing Ed!” Oswald cried, his resolve breaking — whether that was from his exhaustion, Bridgit’s careless words, or both, he couldn’t be sure. “This is about taking back my empire — taking back _ Gotham! _A feat which I rely upon you all to help me accomplish if needs be.”

Perhaps there was a compliment buried somewhere in that spitting outburst like an afterthought, but Oswald paid no mind to it. “Speaking of all of you, I only count two of my esteemed guests — where’s Fries?”

“I think he went looking for someplace cold,” Bridgit grumbled sarcastically, shifting in the seat so that her back was to Oswald. “He’s probably missing his home, too.”

“Oh, _ please,” _ Oswald scoffed, yanking his coat off and throwing it haphazardly onto the coat rack. “Don’t tell me you’d rather go back to working in that _ hellfire forge _than living here where there’s an ornate roof over your head, gourmet food in your stomach, and lavish furniture at your disposal?”

“I think you overestimate how nice your place is. Half the furniture is destroyed, anyway.”

Oswald had turned to head up the stairs to his bedroom, having been finished with this conversation since the moment he’d walked through the door. However, that single snarky comment was like a chain around his neck, and he froze in his tracks as if physically restrained.

“Destroyed?” he hissed, quite literally _ spitting _ the word out. “What do you mean, _ destroyed?” _

“Have you even taken a look around the place? Honestly, the forge was less of a madhouse than this Gothic nightmare.”

In retrospect, Oswald supposed he hadn’t actually taken the time to reacquaint himself with the sorely missed manor, having been far too preoccupied in his quest for Ed. When they’d arrived — though Oswald’s chest had physically swelled with a sense of pride and familiarity at seeing the facade of his father’s mansion — he’d merely dropped Fries off and taken Bridgit with him to seek out Jim Gordon. Ivy had taken a detour to Gotham General to visit her friend, who Oswald vaguely recalled being Selina Kyle — the same Selina Kyle that had tied him up and pointed a shotgun at him for Fish Mooney’s favor. In all honesty, Oswald saw a little bit of himself reflected in those uncannily feline eyes; it truly was a pity to learn she had been incapacitated.

Though, now that Bridgit had finally drawn Oswald’s attention to his careless neglect, he stopped himself to truly give the place a good once over.

The perfect, polished floorboards, the vaguely baroque decor, the warm firelight, the walls with their beautiful wallpaper.

He paused. Pondered. Did a double-take. A twice over.

The dirty, scuffed floorboards, the thick layer of dust on every inch of the decor, the eerie firelight, and the walls with their…

The _ walls. _ Oswald took in a shuddering, insulted gasp at the sight of the _ walls. _

There were indistinct, interminable scribbles on the walls, covering them as if they were paper. It was like looking at a mural of madness, a visual depiction of what Oswald could only imagine were the insane ramblings inside of someone’s pitiful skull. Upon closer inspection, they were revealed to be words, although incredibly hard to make out the farther along Oswald got. He found a spot about halfway up the wall to the left where the penmanship had not yet suffered too terribly and followed the lines until he could make sense of them.

_ You are not wrong who deem that my dream within a dream my days have a been a dream a dream within a dream within a dream yet if hope has flown away in a night or in a dream in a vision or in none is it therefore the less gone? gone? gone? take this kiss upon the brow and in parting from you now thus much let me avow all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream within a dream… _

It was confirmed, Oswald concluded, that they were indeed the ramblings of an alleged madman — but perhaps no longer a living one. The words were those of Poe, Oswald identified, though horribly misquoted, beaten and broken and torn apart to be rearranged into a mindless, aimless logorrhea. This rendition was not written by that particular tormented genius, but there was another contender, one to which that same title was rather applicable. It was a thought Oswald dare not humor just yet.

As he rounded the corner, he was abhorred to find that this loquacity of lunacy continued, though the words grew more rhythmless as Oswald followed them along this adjacent wall, the spacing and punctuation more careless and lax. Near halfway down, the ramblings broke off abruptly and continued about three feet from the floor, connected only to its sibling sentences by a long, messy streak of black ink that trailed straight down. Oswald could only assume that the composer had collapsed at this point, dragging their pen along with them, only to continue their incessant inscription further down, a fallen soldier still fighting a losing war. It was a sickening sight to behold, but Oswald was mesmerized, this poetic nonsense hypnotizing in its own unique way, leading him through the house like a trail of breadcrumbs — a crumb every few feet, a picture of psychosis on every wall.

There was a twist in the road when Oswald reached the kitchen, for the walls in here remained untouched. However, on the table beneath the remnants of a shattered plate and two pieces of moldy bread, the words were incised into the wood.

_ All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. _

The table and the bits of ceramic were bloody.

“Penguin!” a voice called from somewhere behind Oswald, who — for a brief but frightful moment — seemed to forget where he was.

He followed the source of the voice, winding up back in the living room to see Fries looming at the foot of the stairs, cumbersome cryogenic suit and all.

“Hey,” he said, icy, soulless eyes piercing through the dark like blue headlights. He seemed worried — if any conclusions could be drawn from his typically impassive face and one-dimensional expressions, that is. “I think you’re gonna wanna see this.”

If “this” was anything like the hell that was the first floor, Oswald dreaded it. However, there was still that burning fascination, and it was that which spurred Oswald forward, shoving him past Fries and pushing him up the stairs. He was only faintly aware of Ivy’s hesitant footsteps behind him, for he was busy trailing his fingers along the walls, feeling the indentations left by the force with which the words were inscribed.

The stairway was dark, but even in the low light, Oswald could see the drastic difference in the legibility of this floor’s poetry, the shaky scrawl seeming more like juvenile imitations of words than iterations of a renowned nineteenth-century poet’s works. Still, Oswald endeavored to read them, if only in passing, to assure himself of some theme or continuity. All the lines were the same.

Oswald hadn’t realized until he ran out of script that they’d finally reached the second floor. Another thing he hadn’t realized (and certainly something he could have gone a lot longer without realizing) was how _ foul _ this floor smelled. It was a sickeningly familiar stench, the reek of death and decay, with something else faintly reminiscent of a geriatric ward.

The state of this floor was already far worse than that of the preceding one, just as Oswald had feared.

The writings continued, unsurprisingly, but the walls were further decimated by what Oswald would call _ claw marks _ if he didn’t know better. The wallpaper was torn and scored by something sharp, and the doors that lined the hall were in varying stages of discontent: some stood open, others gouged by those same imitation claws, and some of them remained closed and untouched. There was one in particular that had been left alone, and Oswald recognized it immediately as his own bedroom.

“Don’t look too horrified, yet,” Fries spoke up, eliciting a startled jump from Oswald. “Down there, the room on the right.”

Oswald followed the direction of Fries’ pointed finger, eyes settling on one of the more distant rooms, whose door seemed to be in the worst state: scored, splintered, stained, and standing ajar.

And it was Ed’s room.

Oswald couldn’t quite recall charging down the hall to the door, but he came back to his senses as he kicked it the rest of the way open, tears springing to his eyes at the odor emanating from within.

The sight that awaited him was one that took away the rest of his already scarce breath. Oswald couldn’t quite remember ever having seen a room in such horrid disarray. The bedsheets were loose and rumpled, tugged free from the corner on one side with the top sheet drooping to the floor on the other. The pillows were strewn about the bed carelessly, one halfway dangling from the bottom. The lamps on both nightstands had been shoved off (and no doubt damaged) to make room for a jarring array of pill and liquor bottles, most of the latter either empty or a few sips from being that way. Oswald also noticed what he feared and yet knew were used needles, hidden amongst the other unmarked caddies and little plastic baggies that probably once held more unidentifiable drugs.

On the walls is where the psychosis returned — or, perhaps, originated, Oswald theorized. Every inch of space was covered by those words, some even overlapping, looping over each other to make an entirely illegible block of squiggly black ink. Oswald couldn’t even remember what color the walls used to be for not having been in here for so long, and now he couldn’t even _ tell _ behind all of that black. Even the floor had not been forgotten this time, the words carved into the planks, rough and messy and a very high splinter-risk.

“Is that…cocaine?” Ivy’s meek voice arose, and Oswald didn’t have to look back at her to know what she was referring to, his eyes drawn immediately to the small amount of white powder perched precariously on the corner of the right nightstand. Oswald had been sick looking at it the first time, and he was sick again, acid rising up his throat threateningly.

“Looks like it. Do your guests always treat this place like a frat house?” Fries chimed in, though Oswald was hardly listening anymore.

He took sauntering steps into the middle of the room, turning, searching, _ reading, _ taking it all in — the destruction, the pain, the self-loathing, the cries for help. It surrounded and inundated him, suffocating him with sorrow and killing him with grief.

This was all his fault — there was no other explanation. For what else could have driven such a brilliant and egotistical man down a path of low-class self-destruction? _ He _ had done this to the man that he loved. He’d _ broken _ him, cracked his psyche, and he was _ seeing _ it all, physical evidence of Ed’s suffering mental state.

This room was a time capsule, a canvas on which Ed had painted stories of his sorrow and plight — and Oswald was _ standing _in it. Standing in the middle of this room, this capsule, this canvas, standing amidst the repercussions of Ed’s delusions.

_ All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. _

“See what I mean?” Bridgit griped, and Oswald couldn’t care less about when she had decided to join this black parade. “Madhouse. Gothic nightmare.”

“Oswald?” Ivy’s gentle voice arose, softer and almost _ fearful, _ consciously toeing a dangerous line. “Are you okay?”

No, most certainly _ not, _ but Oswald didn’t see a point in voicing these thoughts aloud. It would only cause more commotion, which was precisely the _ last _ thing he wanted right now.

Accompanying his decisive silence, he proceeded towards Ed’s en suite bathroom, the door shut tight and notched with unintelligible scribblings. Oswald thought he might have even seen his name scratched in there once or twice, but didn’t dwell on it before turning the doorknob and pushing it open.

A gust of hot, putrid air rushed forth and gagged him immediately, tears slipping freely from his pinched eyes and his nose burning at the vile stench of vomit. It was a stale and musty odor, likely (and thankfully, Oswald thought distantly) old, for when he mustered up enough courage to actually examine the room, he found no traces of acid. What he did find, however, was equally as revolting, and gradually becoming less shocking.

The mirror seemed to have been the victim of the distorted and obsessive scrawling, the glass inked and scratched and no doubt irreparable. There were more pill bottles lining the counter, though this batch seemed to consist of mainly OTC medicines, with the exception of what appeared to be _ more _ cocaine along the left edge.

The only novel aspect of this arrangement was the dried blood staining the bathroom sink, those dull red tones catching Oswald’s eye immediately and filling him with an unprecedented sense of dread.

“Oswald?” Ivy spoke up again, peering in from the doorway. “Is this that guy’s room? The one in the hospital?”

Oswald glanced up only briefly, but the look in Ivy’s eyes was enough to coax him out of the bathroom, stumbling back into Fries and Bridgit’s line of sight. He was vaguely aware of Ivy pulling the door shut behind him, but not enough to scold her or comment on it at all.

“This is…” He took a shuddering breath, eyes drawn to the bumped-out window seat on the far wall, images of Ed sitting there and reading books or reports Oswald couldn’t understand and didn’t care to still fresh in his mind. “Yes, this is Ed’s room. But how…I can’t…”

_ I can’t understand it. _ Oh, but he could — that was the problem. He _ could _ understand how this admirable and uniquely formidable man could wish to break himself apart in such a prolonged, painful way. He _ could _ understand it, but he wouldn’t.

The air — still thick with that reek of self-destruction and impending death — was now electric with unaddressed tension, the hesitant silence from his companions almost loud enough to deafen him. He might have yelled at them if he had any feeling within him at all besides a helpless sense of inescapable emptiness.

“Listen,” Fries said at last, taking two obvious steps forward, “I’ve seen a lot of drug addicts in my time—”

“Me too,” Ivy interrupted, raising a hand in Oswald’s peripherals.

“We all have,” Bridgit felt it necessary to contribute.

“—Sometimes, there isn’t a reason. Sometimes, they just _ need _ it.”

“Ed has never _ needed _ anything like this before!” Oswald cried, whirling around and balancing precariously on his left leg, the other suspended off the floor and trembling furiously. “There _ is _ a reason for this, and it’s _ my _ fault!”

Fries and Bridgit were standing parallel, statuesque and infuriating with mirroring expressions of indifference. Only Ivy let her true emotions show, circling around Oswald to stand next to her companions, her face dark and heavy with worry — she almost looked her age, even. 

“You say he’s never done this before, yet you say it’s your fault,” Fries stated, narrowing his eyes at Oswald. “Assuming he didn’t start doing it until you were gone, I don’t see how you’re the one to blame.”

“It’s _ his _ fault, Penguin. _ He’s _ the one that shot you. All of this,” Bridgit said, gesturing animatedly to the space about them, “is probably _ guilt.” _

_ Guilt. _ Somewhere deep inside of Oswald, something was laughing. He’d always made an effort not to acquaint himself with _ idiots, _ but it seemed that in a slip of moral compass, he’d done just that.

“You don’t get it,” Oswald groaned, rolling the heels of his hands against his eyes. “He _ shot _ me because I _ killed _ his _ girlfriend! _ Because I was a jealous, _ selfish _ son of a bitch! So it doesn’t matter _ what _ you say, because directly or not, I led him down this path. I drove him to this — _ all _ of this,” Oswald said, sweeping his arms around the room with a humorless chortle. “I brought you all here because I thought I wanted to kill him, but I was wrong. It seems I’ve already killed him — a long time ago, apparently.”

Though saying it aloud was more than painful, Oswald knew it was true. He’d killed Edward Nygma. When, he couldn’t quite be sure — when he killed Isabella? When he told him he loved him? When he made him his chief of staff? When he broke him out of Arkham? When he let him care for his wounds at his old apartment? Or perhaps it had been even longer ago, so far he could almost forget it if it hadn’t been burned into his memory by the branding iron of love — perhaps he’d killed him the minute he met him at the GCPD.

“I brought you here under false pretenses. I’m a liar. I’m manipulative. I get it.”

And he did. For once in his life, he truly felt that he did.

“I still need to take back the underworld from Barbara Kean, so you all can stay if you want to help. Or go. I don’t care. You can take what you want from the house,” he said with a sigh, making his way over to the window seat. “Half of it isn’t worth what it once was, anyhow.”

There was a span of complete and utter silence that followed as Oswald eased himself into the window, prodding at the stiff pillows with a woeful grimace. In the back of his mind, he knew something was off — when one employs convicted criminals with the promise of running Gotham only to disappoint them with love revelations, it’s expected for them to take you up on an offer to steal anything from your rich father’s house, maybe even kill you for good measure. However, it seemed that Oswald’s convicted criminal employees had no such motives, and instead remained where they were, either transfixed by his outburst or in careful contemplation. 

“You know,” Bridgit said after what felt like far too long of a time, “maybe a madhouse _ is _ better than that forge. Not like I can go back, anyway, I did throw fire at my boss’s face.”

“Yeah, and there wasn’t actually a lot of good food where I was living,” Fries added, his suit grinding noisily as he shifted and shrugged. “Guess I could stay for that.”

“And…I’ve got nowhere else to go, anyway.” At the sound of Ivy’s voice, Oswald finally turned to look at them, lined up like soldiers but far more expressive. “Gotham’s my home. And your garden needs tending to. Figure it would be easier having a live-in gardener. Temporarily, I mean,” the ginger hastily added when Oswald narrowed his eyes at her. It hadn’t been intended as a threatening gesture, merely one of mind-boggling disbelief.

“Temporarily,” Oswald breathed, shifting on the seat. “Right.” Because that was what he had wanted, of course — for them to stay with him temporarily, a provisional acquaintanceship to assist him in his journey to reclaim his throne. After that, they had free range to do whatever they pleased. If they dabbled in illegality, that was no longer Oswald’s business. He’d gone on the hunt to recruit a handful of the fiercest (and simultaneously most approachable) of Strange’s experiments to keep them for a limited time and a limited time only.

It was in light of these bitter recollections that Oswald straightened his back, rolled his shoulders, and said something he hardly ever said with as much candor as he did at that moment.

“Thank you.”

For the succeeding days, Oswald kept a tight routine — wake up, have breakfast, visit Gotham General at noon, stay until eight, then go home, eat, and rest. In the hours that he spent by Ed’s bedside, he also stuck to a sort of agenda, always doing the same activities: reading to him, telling him stories, singing, and occasionally (if Oswald was in a better mood than most days), asking him riddles. They never received answers, of course, but Oswald knew that if Ed truly _ could _ hear him in whatever mental swamp of injustice he was hiding in, that he was screaming the solutions at the top of his lungs. Either that or judging Oswald’s choice in riddles entirely — or perhaps both. Oswald certainly wouldn’t put it past him.

It was Oswald’s sixth day of these tightly scheduled visits, and after asking Ed a series of more tender and almost _ sappy _ riddles, he’d reclined in the stiff hospital chair to the best of his ability to allow himself a thirty-minute break.

For doing so little, these visits were exhausting, leaving Oswald physically and emotionally fatigued — so much so he seemed as though he’d aged five years, he observed every morning with a bitter taste in his mouth. He was always quite the sight to see of the mornings, his hair a horrid and bedraggled mess, his complexion pale and eyes dark, wrinkles and stress lines stark against his alabaster skin.

He’d never been too fond of his appearance, but in recent years he’d learned to accept it for what it was — a freckled, splotchy, beaky-nosed monstrosity, but _ his _ face nonetheless. In these past days, he’d been disturbed to find himself slowly slipping back into that pool of utter discontent, and he’d go to extra lengths to make sure he looked _ stunning, _ at the very least.

Very rarely did one get so spiffed up to meet with someone in a coma, but Oswald still felt it a downright disgrace for Ed to have anything less than Oswald’s best. It’s what he’d had in life — no, no, in _ consciousness _— and it’s what he’d have now.

Oswald was almost sure that if Ed had been even _ slightly _ awake, he would have appreciated Oswald’s efforts. Unfortunately, however, no such praise came, and the room remained tense with that consistent, formidable silence, the only sound being Ed’s heart monitor and he and Oswald’s respective breathing. It had become a lovely sort of white noise for Oswald, who could very easily close his eyes and slip into a light, peaceful sleep, unperturbed by the noises in the hall and no longer thrumming with anxiousness and pitiful anticipation. There were very few things to surprise someone when their only present company was an unconscious junkie — Oswald was certainly no exception to this, having grown rather accustomed to Edward’s uncharacteristic silence. It seemed all it took to shut up that infamous mouth was to land him in a coma — very drastic measures, Oswald conceded, but useful information regardless. He made a mental note of it with a soft smile on his lips and tired eyes fixed on Ed’s face.

After having recovered from the initial shock of his former chief of staff’s unfortunate appearance, Oswald could see the serenity that laced his features, how peaceful he looked in sleep, how very almost like a child that Oswald felt the traitorous desire to cry. He hadn’t shed a tear over Ed’s predicament in three days, and he most certainly did not want to break that record now — two more days and he could call himself “cured.”

Yes, there were very few things to surprise someone when their only present company was a junkie, Oswald thought with a pleasant smile, letting his eyes slip shut. He’d even begun to think there was _ nothing _ to surprise him these days, for Ivy no longer came barging in like a lunatic but instead politely knocked. The doctors hardly entered while Oswald was present, too afraid of his wrath or respectful of his grief, and he never expected extra visitors. Jim Gordon had yet to make an appearance, a grievance Oswald was unlikely to pardon, but a small part of him still held out a sliver of hope to see that dreadfully severe face waltz in through the door.

Oswald was lulling himself to sleep on that thought, chuckling softly with the image of a sour and displeased Gordon burned against his eyelids, when he was startled awake by something new. Something unpredicted. Something _ surprising. _

Every shred of concentration and attention was directed at the figure in the bed — the figure who was groaning and whose face was scrunching and whose head was turning and legs were shifting.

The figure whose eyes fluttered open and landed on a transfixed Oswald immediately.


End file.
